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When I ran RorRL I had to modify the treasure a bit for a 6 man group. Even dropping xp and only leveling based o the story aligned suggestions in the books wasn't enough to keep the group on pace.

To do this I had a player keep a running tally of what they'd found. This was used to make sure the party was getting loot. If they missed something it didn't magically show up in the next encounter. Instead a few treasure based side quests appeared to fill up the party's coffers.

Honestly, about half of my riddles and puzzles have no answer. I simply let the party spend ten, fifteen, however long it takes to come up with a solution. That solution works, but as you said has a twist. Then they spend the same amount of time figuring out the twist and Eureka!

Best is after when the party is talking over the session and they're trying to find other solutions to the puzzle. Then someone says something and I go "ARRRG, wish they'd gone with that solution!"

Or in the case of the OP's situation, that's actually what happened. Bad guy gets into your dreams and traps you in a time loop. The only way to win is to admit defeat. Party wakes up, gains all the exp they earned and gets to enjoy that. Doesn't mean you need to reset to the start of the dungeon, just the last time the party rested. Heck, they could even all be in the final room but the BBEG is long gone along with his henchmen.

Exactly. The one time I played in a game with the "run them into the ground until they hit the magic button" fight I was this one guy. The GM trusted me not to do it too soon and told me the conditions for revealing it to any other player. My character was actually working fo rthe bad guy this whole time, so it made sense for me to know how to stop a time loop. Doing so outed me as an agent and my escape managed to perfectly set up the next arc of the story.

Amazing idea, but it really only works when a player is aware of how to end it and that the player doing so forwards the story.

Great write up. Only thing I'd change would be "The Master Key could will get leaked and then you could become a victim...

When the weakest link is a human knowing the password, it doesn't matter how strong the algorithm is or how many bytes long the encryption key takes up. Only how well they can protect themselves from the most convoluted and impressive social engineering schemes the world will have ever seen.

+2 damage on every shot you make with a bow forever with no cost. Yes (level 4 and onward)

That should keep you busy for a while feat wise. Other than those feats I'd recommend you take the trait (you get two traits,normally one is a 'campaign trait' from the campaign, and the other is up to you) Dangerously Curious. This will give you access to using wands and spells and opens up a lot of roleplaying options. As a new player, having something that gets you thinking out of yourself and as a character is to find the little things that make a person unique. One 'easy' way to make a fighter unique is to have them play around with magic.

The trait gives you +1 to Use Magic Device and Use Magic Device becomes a class skill. As a fighter with limited skill points this may seem strange. But there are a lot of useful buff spells in the game. Some make it easier to hit, a lot increase you armor, many increase your stats, and some make you a simply amazing archer. You won't always have a caster around to spend time giving you buffs. With this trait you get +1 to UMD + (each rank you put in) + 3 (once you put at least one rank into it. In order to cast a spell from a wand you need to make a DC 20 check. At level 1 you get +5. That isn't too good. By level 6 you have +10, that means you get it off around half the time. Not the best, but it means you can likely heal yourself (or another party member) in a clutch moment.

As for other places to put your skills, Athletics is amazing, the rest are up to you.

Item wise, work towards a Composite bow with strength + (your strength modifier). This gives you an extra (strength mod) damage on every bow shot. Other than that get it magical, more damage and more bonuses to hit. Your armor should give you the most AC wile having a max dex bonus higher than or equal to your dex mod. As an archer you dex will be high, so you'll likely end up in light armor. That's fine, get it magical once your weapon is and keep upgrading it.

As for other magical items, the 'Big Six' magical items every chatacter should have and upgrade are

Magical Weapon (hit better and harder)

Magical Armor (get hit less)

Cloak of Resistance (make saving throws)

Stat boosting Item (Belt of dex)

Amulet of Natural Armor (get hit even less)

Ring of Protection (get hit even less than less)

Make sure you get these when you have the gold, and keep upgrading them as you go along.

Welcome to the end of that whole wall! Again, feel free to ask me anything you want to know. I've been playing Pathfinder for way too long so I've got a lot to share with a newer player. Not just about your character, ask me about anything you want to know about Pathfinder.

Seeing as this is the only way to have a chance of escaping, it's a pretty poor choice by the GM. Spellcraft simply tells you what an item does if you make spellcraft vs 15+cl of the item. Doesn't matter if it's a bane sword or unique item.

That's what I mean by I like the concept, but I have no idea how to actually make it work. Pause the timer when an animation is going off (or simply add a bit to it) would probably work as would only starting it after card draw is over. But at what point is your system for counting time complex enough that you can't explain it to a new player in three lines of text?

I'm just not hopeful because of team 5's mentality. If more deck slots was too complex, a more complex turn timer probably is as well.

This reminds me of the interaction between [[curse of rafaam]] and [[Nozdormu]]. A lot of players don't know how to skip the few skip able animations, unavoidable animations eat up a large part of each turn. Players lost games simply to how the animations interacted. I know this is an extreme, but it sets a bar that drawing and seeing two card effects revealed can eat up 15 seconds.

I'm all for limiting dead time. This just doesn't seem like the way to do it. But here's an example of a turn that happens occasionally when playing druid.

I play violet teacher into innervate into wrath. Just from the animation of the violet teacher entering play, the stupidly long animation of choose one and then wrath itself, drawing a card, and two violet teacher activation, I probably used up more than my allotment of time and had to dip into my bank. That's assuming I made no attacks, had no other minion effects activate (knife juggler), and had nothing happen on my opponent's side (cat trap). The animations alone probably ate up my 15 seconds of allotted time, any thinking or misclicks I make are eating into my time bank. Then on the next turn I play staghelm into raven idol. There's no way I'm going to be able to complete this turn without dipping into my bank again. On neither turn am I attempting to stall. One turn is eaten up mostly due to animations. The other is spent thinking and planning. When do I have a chance to 'store up' my time bank after turn one and two? Each turn requires careful planning to play appropriately both to secure my win condition while also managing the board.

Thanks for that article! I've been using it suggestions in my house rules for the past three years or so and it's a much more interesting game. While the power level doesn't really change, it's great to see players using less standard or cookie cutter builds.

Haha, I forgot to put in something about pfs specifically capping at 12. I haven't actually been a pfs gm in around three years. But I guess if you reach three or four star gm that mentality gets drilled into you.

I thing the OP still has a point. The written asventure paths tend to end around 16 or 17. Most homebred groups either finish between the two or don't make it far. At least in my experience parties getting over level 16 (and having enough gold/time to get the cool +4 stuff on weapons) is rare.

Reading the comments it feel like most people are missing out on the issue here. The best way to add damage to your weapon is to have a campaign where you only fight one enemy and get Bane "Adventure". Other than that if you simply want to increase your damage getting a boring extra +1 on your weapon is the best way to do it. Not only is is a n unreduceable or resisted damage, it's also more accuracy. That plus one to hit is worth much more than most effects.

I'm with you though. The forced +1 before bonuses feels like an archaic idea. This simply restricts players from trying out cool effects, especially in standarized play. When your character caps out at 12, you're going to end up with around 110,000 gold. If 30% of that is in your weapon you get 33k to spend on weapons, just barely getting a +4 weapon. If you want to use a +3 effect, you need to wait until you've basically ened your character before getting to use it. However if that +1 restriction is removed you could pick up that Greatsword of Speed at level 10 instead. Two levels may not seem like much, but that's a lot more time to play around. +2 effects would be available at level 8, so you're paladin gets a Holy Longsword fairly early on.

I'd be fine letting my players build magic items without the +1 first. It makes DR/magic actually worth something and encourages players to have a +1 weapon in backup, but use their axiomatic polearm without feeling like they're losing money.

If the connection is bad because of ping latency between players, you should be fine. There's nothing to be done about distance. Its easy to know from the hosting side if a player was having a bad time ping.

If you're always having a horrible connection, then it may not be sbmm. It may be that your isp has a bad connection or your Internet is just poopoo when connecting to bungie.

Basically, Bungie knows when a play has a bad connection, and when a player has high latency due to distance.

On an android device go to the play store and download the amazon app store. Uninstall your standard playstore hearthstone app. Nos download hearthstone from the Amazon app. Exactly the same game, but now you can use Amazon coins as an option when buying packs.

Amazon coins have a discount the more you buy. So buying $40 of Amazon coins gives you $50 worth of coins to spend in game. Buy the coins in Amazon, then load up hearthstone. You should be able to purchase $50 worth of packs with coins. Coins that you only spent $40 on.

Some advice is to run your game like a tutorial level. Explain by showing, not telling. Have an npc do something or present a challenge that can only be done by using the skill. I'd start with a skill based section with some stealth mechanics. Not actual stealth rolls, but needing to run vs walk. Make a running jump to introduce athletics skills. Introduce that some actions are just stated, while other's require rolling dice. Then have a simple combat. No spells, no reach weapons, no positioning. A bad guy in a hallway needs to be defeated. This lets you run the basics of combat, declare an attack and roll against AC.

And so on. Introduce new mechanics one at a time and continue to reinforce existing mechanics. Just because you're working on flanking and in combat movement doesn't mean you can't have an enemy double move around the fight before engaging.